telecom@ucbvax.ARPA (10/21/84)
From: Jon Solomon (the Moderator) <Telecom-Request@MIT-MC>
TELECOM Digest Sunday, 21 Oct 1984 Volume 4 : Issue 104
Today's Topics:
Re: TELECOM Digest V4 #103
two quick questions
Re: Usage Sensitive Service and Fairness
Finding out your phone number
Md. local options
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Date: Wed 17 Oct 84 15:28:15-MDT
From: The alleged mind of Walt <Haas@UTAH-20.ARPA>
Subject: Re: TELECOM Digest V4 #103
Re: British Telecom & IBM's proposed VAN
The big problem with SNA as an interface standard is that IBM can
change the standard any time they want, and in fact can do the
development work in house and announce the new standard and the
product that uses it at the same time. This makes competeing with
them highly unprofitable, because you are always trying to catch up to
get your market back. The real advantage of having a standard set by
an organization like the CCITT or ISO is that the changes are out in
the open and predictable, so that everybody has at least equal time to
work the problems, if not equal resources. The best solution for the
UK, in my opinion, would be to ban British Telecom from the VAN
business, and allow other vendors to build VANs on top of BT circuits
the way Tymnet and Telenet do in the US.
Re: Net 1000
Actually, they aren't really planning to have a two-node network as
such, but they put Ford on the testbed before the other nodes were
running. The last time I talked to them, they planned to have a
network of reasonable size running sometime in 1985. Having acquired
some personal experience with the problems inherent in networking, I
think they might be a little optimistic.
Regards -- Walt
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Date: Wed 17 Oct 84 22:48:02-EDT
From: Bob Soron <Mly.G.Pogo%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: two quick questions
First, I'd appreciate any recommendations for speaker- phones.
Please respond directly to me, since I'm not a big fan of netwide
commercials or plugs; I'll gladly summarize to the digest if there's
any interest.
Second, we have an old 10-button Touch-Tone phone. Are there
any phone collectors out there? Might this be -- now or in the future
-- a collectors' item? I don't even remember how long ago we got it --
it was as soon as the service was introduced in this area. (It's
hardwired, so I don't know how -useful- it is, even if one can live
without the * and # buttons.) ...Bob
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From: <hplabs!sdcrdcf!trwrb!desint!geoff@Berkeley>
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 84 23:00:46 pdt
Subject: Re: Usage Sensitive Service and Fairness
There have been some accusations on this list that AT&T (and, after
disvestiture, the local phone companies) have been pushing for Usage
Sensitive Service even though they do not have usage-sensitive costs.
I would like to argue that this is not so. Although I have a strong
personal interest in avoiding USS (I take the Usenet news feed over my
home phone line), I fear there are some very good business reasons for
a phone company to want it.
It is true that most of a telephone company's costs are for plant and
equipment, and are usage-independent. But that equipment is capable
of handling a certain fixed maximum load. If that maximum is
exceeded, even if only for short periods of time, more expensive
equipment must be installed. Thus, the phone company has a very
strong financial incentive to keep you from exceeding that maximum.
The simplest way to do this is to encourage you to limit you calling,
even in the local area. I think a lot of phone company executives are
probably sweating profusely under the specter of more and more
hour-long modem calls from cheap PC's flooding a system that was
designed on the assumption that the average call length was a few
minutes, while the state PUC refuses to let them adjust rates to
suppress it (or at least make the people who are causing the need for
new equipment pay for it).
Not to sound pro-phone-company. No GTE customer can be that. But
they really do have a problem here. USS is one solution. I would
like to hear others proposed, especially ones that preserved our
current privilege of cheap digital communications.
Geoff Kuenning
...!ihnp4!trwrb!desint!geoff
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Date: 19 October 1984 01:36-EDT
From: Donald E. Hopkins <A2DEH @ MIT-MC>
Subject: Finding out your phone number
In the Washington/Maryland/Virginia area, the operators ask for a
password when I call them up and ask for the number that I am calling
on. They explain that they are not allowed to give out that
information. I know that it is available to them, though, as once, one
DID give it to me, and another time, on another exchange, one started
to read it off, stopped after saying the fourth digit, and then
realizing what she was doing, asked for the password. I asked her why
they had that policy, and she said that if I were calling from an
unlisted number, it would be wrong for them to give me the number. I
wasn't, though... *SIGH*...
-Don
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Date: Fri, 19 Oct 84 9:23:23 EDT
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <cmoore@Brl-Vld.ARPA>
Subject: Md. local options
The following types of local service are in the just-released Oct.
1984 Northeastern Maryland phone book: Unlimited Service (flat rate)
Per Call Service (message rate) New Local Measured Service (timed
calls)
with the latter 2 having the same fixed charge!
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End of TELECOM Digest
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